According to the article 5 different VC firms representing 40% of the voting shares asked him to resign today. Kalanick still controls the majority of voting shares and a board seat.
Most of Kalanick's trouble started with Susan Fowler speaking out. Please believe women when they report harassment in the workplace. Many of their reports may not be as clear cut as Mrs. Fowler's.
Uber's business model reminds me of Zapp Brannigan.
Fry: "I heard one time you single-handedly defeated a horde of rampaging somethings in the something something system"
Brannigan: "Killbots? A trifle. It was simply a matter of outsmarting them."
Fry: "Wow, I never would've thought of that."
Brannigan: "You see, killbots have a preset kill limit. Knowing their weakness, I sent wave after wave of my own men at them until they reached their limit and shut down. Kif, show them the medal I won."
Here is the clip https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eowPka21BNc
If you go to a police station and report a murder do you think they'll a) investigate your claim or b) ignore you?
That is the sort of belief we're talking about, a serious investigation with the assumption the person reporting it is not lying. The investigation itself could of course result in not sufficient evidence being found. It's really not that complicated.
Not sure who "we" is but far too frequently at tech companies, harassment allegations are ignored. For that matter prominent men sometimes admit to harassment and are acquitted anyway.
Also, people fired for making complaints.
That has the nice property that it's illegal, the whistleblower can get compensated, but only if they already have the means to wage a legal battle.
There have long been reports from various minority communities in the United States and elsewhere of crime reports being ignored entirely or not taken seriously.
Alternatively, look at the public scrutiny of police shootings. However you personally feel about them, there is a section of the population that sees them as a miscarriage of justice that is playing out in the public square. People look at the extremely low (non-existent?) conviction rate of officers and see either a police force operating without consequences or a remarkably well-mantained and well-monitored police force.
Obviously there should be an investigation, but history tells us that it is very easy to fool ourselves into believing we've done a "fair" investigation which will not look fair to outsiders or victims. No malice is necessary, but it is frequently endemic anyway.
Harrassment is often entirely one person's word against another. Many of these cases are decided by who the jury believes, if the case even makes it to court—because, remember, most victims don't press charges.
Investigations don't help much in these cases. The pressure isn't to find (often non-existent) evidence, it is to commit to the shitty process of trying to get people to care about you a painful part of your life.
A business culture flows from the top. Reading Susan J Fowler's account told me the whole company must be toxic, for such abhorrent behaviour to be condoned of.
Please investigate, not necessarily believe. Innocent til proven guilty still has some place in this world..
That being said, kudos to anyone courageous enough to speak the truth even at the risk of vilification.
Believe. Do not take action against individuals without investigation, but at organization levels, take measures as though the complaints are true.
> Believe
That's sounds like giving accusers too much power, especially if it leads to firing. It's not as if people don't lie.
Accusers are unlikely to abuse this power in the workplace because it harms them, too. It's embarassing, stigmatizing, and often leads to conflicts with the friends of the aggressor.
We can respectfully and supportively receive such reports in good faith, but they need to undergo some level of verification.
No one's questioning that. Believe != immediately fire someone once you get a report, that's in GP
>Do not take action against individuals without investigation
He says on the same line.
"I believe you" is a common thing people say. That's what OP means I'm sure.
I think more appropriate would be to limit the scope of belief to the complainant. Treat them as a person; acknowledge they have experienced something traumatic.
Do not believe every word anyone says as the absolute truth of an event. Evidence, corroboration, attempts to be objective -- these are all the rights of the accused.
Believe the complainant but do not assume they are correct. Our memories are the movies based on real events.
No that's ridiculous.
Take measures based as though the complaints are made in good faith.
If you assume them true then you would act as if the investigation has already taken place, and determined that they are true. If you're going to act like that why would you need an investigation?
If complaints or concerns are raised in good faith then you have no need to mistrust the representation and instead can look to the facts and context of the situation.
Believing someone is not important, understanding the sequence of events that led to them speaking up is.
You literally just said "believe" because that's exactly what assuming the complaints are made in good faith is
I replied down thread to a similar point you made - I think you are redefining "believe" to the point where it loses value.
Responding as if someone is acting in good faith means that
- you believe that
- they believe that
- they are true
On the other hand, if you believe someone it means that
- you believe that
- they are true
Using "believe" to mean the first situation only makes everyone's meaning less clear.
As I said in response: I don't really care what HN thinks about the term: the experts in the field recommended it.
That should give you pause when you claim (incorrectly) that a such a narrow usage of language is correct.
As speakers of English, we ARE the experts in the field, and the vast majority of us don't agree with you.
That's more like "take them serious" on the "believe" (i.e. "It's true, do something!") - "take them serious" (i.e. that could very well have happened, let's check this out) - dismiss (i.e. yeah, yeah, let them talk, could never have happened) spectrum.
All three points lead to different actions and the one in the middle seems to be the most appropriate.
>Take measures based as though the complaints are made in good faith.
Which is to say, do more than just investigate. Take action as though the complaints are true, although not necessarily all the action you would take if you knew the complaint to be exactly factual.
You should always investigate, even if (to borrow your formatting)
you believe that they believe that their statements are false
and are making a bad faith accusation. It would still be correct to investigate if that was your belief. If you believed that the accusations were entirely factual, then perhaps the immediate step would be to fire someone. But if instead you simply believe that the person is accusing someone of something in good faith, something has already gone wrong and there is a problem. Even if no one did anything wrong.
To put it in terms that might be more familiar, every complaint is an incident and should involve a (blameless) postmortem that asks how the system failed such that someone felt the need to complain. And action should be taken in response. Sometimes, the system failed in such a way that it allowed a malicious actor to do a bad thing, and that malicious actor should be reprimanded, independent of the postmortem.
Believe the accuser when writing the postmortem, and begin incident response as soon as possible. Investigate fully before reprimanding a potential malicious actor.
>as though the complaints are true >though not ... exactly factual
What's that supposed to mean?
It was badly worded, restated might be "as though the complaints are made in earnest though cannot be relied on as 100% factual". Which is to say, they should be taken seriously, and immediate action should be taken when possible, but insofar as all memories are fungible and witnesses unreliable, things should be verified when possible before certain measures are taken.
Investigating starts with belief.
You don't have to assume truth, just believe they mean their account, you assume good faith. Believe them and allow that belief to start the process of uncovering what the truth is.
There's a reason Listen & Believe is a thing and it's not because anyone is saying "you should have unquestioned faith in what someone says".
I'm not sure what you mean here by belief, but it seems like a redefinition that causes the word to lose value.
"Believe" has always implied to me "understands to be true". How can I believe anything based only on the words of a single person? (Except trivial things like believing that they said something to you)
I have primarily heard the phrase "listen and believe" used by people who think it is impossible for certain kinds of people to understand the experiences of other kinds of people.
Following that argument, the claim is that if you assert an experience I am not capable of understanding then I must accept it, for I have no grounds to refute it.
This has always seemed like unquestioned faith to me, for I think any argument should be able to stand on it's own merit. Maybe I am missing some nuance to the argument, or perhaps there is more going on, but in any case 'believe' seems to be the wrong word.
shrug
I'm using the usage that social and case workers use when they talk about believing victims.
So... frankly, I don't really care what HN thinks of the usage.
Note, again, that nothing you said is counter to the "good faith" usage. You're assuming they are speaking the truth as they see it. That's all.
That's how any investigation that involves eye witness testimony works.
It's also the recommended practice for improving reporting and investigation so, again, don't really care what HN thinks about the term: the experts in the field recommended it.
Innocent until proven guilty is a great standard for criminal trials but probably not for the workplace, where people who report harassment are usually taking an incredible career risk by doing so.
on the flip side of this, at-will employment is a reason a company could take immediate action without having to investigate.
People can also be very manipulative. Following down this path (i.e. "believing that the accuser is right even before the investigation starts") will only lead to less women being hired for relevant positions.
Here's a relevant scenario: I'm a man, I hold a managerial position and I have to choose between hiring another man or a woman as a one of my direct-reports. Let's say both contenders have the same qualifications, they're both equally fit for the job, but then, I, as a manager, start thinking that if I hire the woman she will then possibly think of filing a sexual harassment complaint down the line in order to take my job. Remember the "believe" part, which means that the sexual complaint doesn't even need to be backed by anything real, because most of the times after the complaint has been made public the damage is already done for me, as a male manager, no matter what the investigation finds (if it manages to find anything). So I choose the man over the woman as my direct-report.
Or maybe we just promote more women and gay men to managerial positions :)
So what you're saying is, in your "relevant" scenario, you would discriminate based on gender for a hiring decision.
I think it would be more fair to say he would discriminate based on perceived risk to himself. In this case, that risk is based on the sex of the person involved, but his argument can also include, for example, hiring someone with lesser qualifications, who is less likely to be promoted past him, over a more experienced candidate.
The more general point would be, be aware of the second order effects of changes you promote. For example, revocation of innocent-until-proven-guilty would almost certainly reduce the chances of people who have blown the whistle of being hired again, as they would present a much higher risk to prospective companies, regardless of whether their claims were true. The fact that they would blow the whistle at all would serve as a huge red flag.
Of course, I don't actually know the incidence of sexual harassment at workplaces, and have no idea whether false reports are even an issue. I strongly doubt they are, but I can somewhat understand male managers fear of them, given that they can ruin careers and marriages. As much as sexual harassment is a problem, I don't think assumption of guilt is an appropriate or long-term effective solution.
When you introduce irrational events into a mostly rational world (i.e. when you introduce "believe before investigation" into a world run by financial compensation) then you're bound to have irrational responses, such as discrimination, yes.
Assuming other people aren't psychopaths is irrational optimism, while desperate defensive strategies like not hiring high-risk people are perfectly rational.
In a world where no evidence is required before firing, then that would be the sane thing to do. Always hire the sex you are not attracted to and make your sexual preference very clear.
Im sorry, but if you extrapolate that kind of paranoia and self-servedness everything has difficult repercusions. Maybe companies shouldnt have an HR department at all because people might decide the risk of someone complaining about them is so big that they stop hiring anyone.
I've never understood this position. We take a risk too by following innocent until proven guilty in criminal trials, but hundreds of years of the opposite (e.g. "A witch!" -> kill the 'offender', "A child molester!" -> kill the 'offender') have shown us that the risks of a fair trial are better than the risks of ruining peoples life over accusations. Why should this be any different in the work place?
a. Because a false positive may result in moving someone to a different division, not burning them at the stake.
b. Because the costs of a false negative is forcing someone to continue working for/with someone they clearly feel uncomfortable around.
(compare to crimes, where it's much easier to protect the victim even without any sanctions against the accused)
There's a middle ground between innocent until proven guilty and condemned by accusation and we've been using it in a courts of law for many, many years. Sexual harassment is primarily a civil issue, not a criminal one. And civil issues are resolved based on the preponderance of the evidence, not innocent until proven guilty.
Anyone accused of sexual harassment should have a chance to give their side of the story and an investigation should be performed, but the company should act based on what HR believes happened, not just what HR can prove happened. Neither the accuser nor the accused has the presumption of being right or the burden of proof.
Even when the burden of proof is a preponderance of the evidence, the accuser still has the burden the proof. The general rule seems to be more than 50% probability or "more probable than not." This is not a minor issue...if all you have as evidence are the testimonies of the accuser and and accused and no way to impeach either one of them, deference should still be given to the accused.
Also note that it is in general impossible to prove that something did not happen, as opposed to proving it did, as things that did not happen have no evidence of their occurrence by definition...
> "Civil issues are resolved based on the preponderance of the evidence, not innocent until proven guilty." ... "Neither the accuser nor the accused has the presumption of being right or the burden of proof."
This is incorrect. "Innocent until proven guilty" and "preponderance of evidence" are not two levels on one scale. They are distinct legal principles which can be applied at the same time or separately. Both, however, relate to the burden of proof and differ between criminal and civil trials, which is probably the source of the confusion.
Crudely: one standard is about what happens without sufficient evidence, the other is about how much evidence is sufficient.
---
The burden of proof is a general concept of which party in a trial must prove their claims, and to what standard. "Presumption of innocence" is one possible answer to "which party", while "preponderance of evidence" is a possible answer to "what standard".
The party bearing the burden of proof for an issue is the party which must provide evidence. Simply: if everyone at the trial rests without offering any evidence, whoever bears the burden of proof loses. In criminal trials, this is the presumption of innocence you mention. In civil trials, the matter is more complicated, but in effect the plaintiff bears the (initial) burden. In asset forfeiture cases, infamously, the government bears the burden in the initial trial (against the asset), but the owner bears the burden of proof as a third-party claimant if they want their property back.
(It's emphatically not true that neither side has the burden of proof in civil trials. There is always a burden of proof when a claim is being made, to determine what happens if no evidence is provided. However, civil cases frequently involve affirmative defenses, in which each party bears the burden of proof for the claims made by that party. Both, not neither.)
The standard of proof, meanwhile, is the hurdle which must be cleared by whoever bears the burden of proof. It's how convincing their claim must be to be accepted. In civil cases, yes, this is a "preponderance of evidence", interpreted as the claim being more likely than not. In criminal cases, this is "beyond a reasonable doubt" - that's on the same scale as preponderance. Other standards exist outside of trial settings: in various contexts US law employs standards like "some evidence" and "reasonable suspicion".
---
I'm not (just) being pedantic here. If we're talking about borrowing a legal standard for deciding against someone in a dispute, I think it's very important that we're clear on what we mean.
It's possible to vary both the size and placement of the burden. We could believe the accuser (burden on the accused), but hold the accused to a mere "some credible evidence" standard for their defense. We could believe the accused and demand evidence "beyond a reasonable doubt", or lower that to "preponderance of evidence", or even further. Or we could even use some standard not borrowed from the courts.
But right now, almost no one clarifies what they mean. The results of moving the burden will be very different from the results of lessening the burden, and it's important to understand what we're proposing.
The problem is with these "difficult" issues the first thing anyone who is trained to work in this area (even on the employee side) as I am - will tell you is you have to verify what you are being told.
Preponderance of the evidence is the standard that companies should be following because that is the standard that will be followed in any civil suit that follows the company's resolution of the issue, either from the accused or the accuser.
Innocent until proven guilty is the standard for depriving someone of their freedom, not their job. If the harassment rises to the level of sexual assault, it's the standard the prosecutor will use. Otherwise, it's irrelevant in the context of sexual harassment.
Trust, but verify
General observations from experience:
A well-run company will have proper procedures, processes in place to deal with work place issues.
Management and all staff will also be required to take training on a continuous basis.
Professionally managed organizations don't walk around "believing" this or that or spouting off "innocent until proven guilty" and such
:)
>Management and all staff will also be required to take training on a continuous basis.
This is miserable. Unless the definition of sexual harassment changes every 6 months, you should not be forcing employees to retake these training sessions.
Often they are a means of having something to which they can point and say "we were doing our very best to create a safe environment". It's more of "ammo in case of lawsuit" than actual useful training. It may also be to just follow regulations in some places where they ought to have at least X hours/minutes of training on compliance related matters per year/month etc.
People (hopefully) won't get practice on reporting and handling harassment claims. It's good to have a refresher training to both remind employees of the process as well as a gesture to show they are still taking the issue seriously.
We are required to take ethics training like this yearly. Simply doubling that frequency may be justified due to Uber's history.
Is that a passive (maybe it's not passive) aggressive smiley face? In a paragraph talking about what it means to be professional?
The Susan Fowler article greatly accelerated this process and drew a huge amount of (deserved) media attention. However, Uber has a long history of bad behavior in many different ways. The internal culture being rotten was known-about-but-not-talked-about for a long time, and their history of legally gray and unethical business practices was already a major specter on the company's public image.
Please believe women when they report harassment in the workplace
One of the problems with this unilateral statement is that if this becomes the new norm, then women can just level accusations and be believed. Men get fired or have other consequences.
It is never a good idea to have a policy of sweepingly and uncritically believing some category of people over another. That is actually the problem we currently have, only it is generally white men who get believed, no matter what they say, while women and poc get ignored, dismissed, etc. Consider how poorly that is currently serving women and poc and maybe stop to wonder if you would want to be on the receiving end of that.
Your remarks make it clear that you have enormous privilege and you imagine you cannot lose that advantage. Consider the possibility of losing it. Just as a thought experiment. Your smugness is deeply rooted in your assumption that you will always be privileged. And I don't even know where to begin here in telling you how sick and twisted that is.
In a weird way, it deeply reinforces the current sick system. And if you did get your way, you could well lose the thing you currently cannot imagine losing.
I am not for having a Lord of the Flies social order and simply shuffling around who the default victims are. I would like to treat everyone better, not simply make the current victims the next generation of abusive tyrants.
It is to my knowledge that the problems have been around from the start, but you haven't noticed it.
I'm pushed to think that the "media" didn't report on it too much because the problems were economic. But as an average media company, that story doesn't sell, it doesn't interest the average reader, so they don't report it that much. Then the sexual harrasment scandal surfaced and _that_ is when the media jumped on board, because everybody loves getting political and hearing about scandals and feminism and all those kind of controversial topics.
If anything, the scandal damaged Uber's public image, but that is a superficial problem in proportion to their disasterous funding model and general financials.
>Please believe women when they report harassment in the workplace
This meme is often repeated in context of sexual harrassment (workplace or otherwise). How do you square that with the fact that women are as capable of laying and misleading as men are? How do you square that with "innocent until proven guilty" when accusation are leveled against another individual or company.
He didn't say that women don't lie about harassment, just that they are taken more seriously. Similar to rape claims.
No. Nobody argues sexual harrassment claims shouldn't be taken seriously. Nobody argues rape claims shouldn't be taken seriously. Nobody. That's not what OP argued. It's a common meme to argue that claims of sexual harrassment and sexual assult should be assumed to be true. That's insane. It upends our entire notion of Justice.
Nobody says they don't take these things seriously, but an glance at the data will show you that many don't actually take them seriously.
You're moving the goalposts in this discussion. We're talking about doing away with long held ideas of what Justice means.
The required burden of proof can and should be much lower in the workplace.
Sure everyone is capable of lying but P(harassment occurred | report of harassment) is much greater than P(harassment did not occur | report of harassment).
>Sure everyone is capable of lying but P(harassment occurred | report of harassment) is much greater than P(harassment did not occur | report of harassment).
Care to put some real numbers on that?
Bayes would like to see you in his office
I should think that common sense would answer this question. You square it like this:
Let's say a person in your company tells you their boss is sexually harrassing them. You're on reasonably good terms with both the accuser and the accused.
Some responses you might make in this case:
- Deflect. Pretend you didn't hear it. Or, if pressed: "This isn't something I know anything about. You'd better take that up with them. Or maybe you could talk to HR?"
- Express skepticism: "Well, I don't know if you're lying or not. Sounds like a he-said she-said situation. Sorry."
- Express emotional support: "That sounds terrible! I'm sorry you're going through this, and I appreciate that it must be very hard for you to talk about this. How can I help?"
- Provide logistical support: "Let's get to the bottom of this."
- Express complete solidarity: "That bastard! We're going to nail them right to the wall for this. Right. To. The. Wall."
- Express complete solidarity for the accused: "How could you say this about them? They're a good person! They would never intentionally harass you. It must be a misunderstanding!"
Now: which responses might fall under the sentiment of "please believe women"? Which wouldn't? Which responses violate your ethical norms?
Seems to me, if you're purely caught up in the legalism of the situation, I'm guessing your response is going to be "skepticism," whether you want it to be or not.
I'm not sure what your argument is. Unless you are part of HR in your made-up hypothetical situation, it's not your job to intervene or seek retribution because you'll just screw it up and you'll make things worse. Personally, if you know both parties well you may very well find yourself skeptical of those claims ... or not - context matters.
All companies will have a process for handling harrassment claims and process for resolving them. Accusations should be directed to HR (or suitable designated party at the company). If the harrassment continues you may have to involve the legal system - that's what it's there for.
So, your answer in this case is: you do not get involved, period. Deflect, maybe some logistical support to direct them to HR, but nothing more?
They go to HR and a week later they're let go – no real explanation given. (Hey, it's at will employment here in CA.) Or, as happens at Uber, nothing happens, and your coworker continues to complain about harrassing behavior (if they're even talking to you at this point). What do you do now?
My point is: the real world is messy, and doesn't come with cut-and-dried definitions and solutions. Processes can help some, but true neutrality comes at a cost. Corrupt and sexist agencies in your company can continue to operate with aplomb. Your relationship will be damaged with coworkers who have had this happen to them – to say nothing of how it damages them when they have this happen and all of their coworkers look nervously away. It can poison your relationship to the company and all the good people that work there.
I read "please believe women" as an invitation to get involved in a constructive way, and I fervently disagree with you that you as a coworker can only make things worse. You can offer emotional support, so your coworker knows you're there for them. If you have pertinent information, you can offer it. You can hold your company's feet to the fire to make sure they're handling it appropriately. And of course – since I didn't specify the gender in the scenario – you can do the same whether the people involved are male, female, or anything in between.
> Please believe women when they report harassment in the workplace. Many of their reports may not be as clear cut as Mrs. Fowler's.
no evidence? no problem. guilty until proven innocent based on the gender of the accuser.